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Damocles Belby
Damocles Francis Belby, O.M. 2nd Class, (b. 11th Nov 1959), is an English wizard and potioneer, most notable for his creation of the Wolfsbane Potion. The potion, which helped relieve some of the effects of Lycanthropy, was groundbreaking, and earned him his Order of Merlin. Biography Early Life Damocles Francis Belby was born to Flavia and Quintus Belby, on 11th November 1958, and the two were very pleased at the birth of their first son. Damocles was a precocious young child, bright and with hearty and infectious laugh, and his parents saw a bright future ahead of him. His avid love of reading developed from an early age, and they could tell even from his pre-Hogwarts expressions of magic that he was going to be a talent. Damocles, for what it's worth, remembers having a distinctly normal and uneventful childhood. His parents were kind enough to him, if a little distant; but he could tell they loved him all the same, and made sure he had every advantage life could offer him. He ended up with two younger siblings, Milo and Irene, a few years down the line, and initially he liked being their big brother. He liked being the one to show them how the world worked, and seeing them grow up with his influence. All seemed to indicate that he was a bright boy with a supportive family and good future laid out ahead of him. Hogwarts Years (1970 - 1977) As an intelligent child who spent most of his time trying to accrue knowledge wherever he could, his parents were quietly confident about Damocles' future during and beyond Hogwarts. It was no surprise either when he was sorted into Ravenclaw, not only a house that they thought would suit him immensely, but also the house that they'd both been in during their time at school. Looking back, he wouldn't say that Hogwarts was a bad thing to happen to him. He had many a good time in that castle, and met some great people - but it was certainly where all his problems started. Damocles was capable in his first few years - a lot of the stuff they were covering in all of his lessons was stuff he'd already learned himself before even getting to the castle, so advanced had he been in childhood. Damocles was comfortable. Around third year, things started to change, as the classes started to become a little more complex and rigorous in preparation for their O.W.Ls. What had previously been innocent intellectual curiosity about the world started to become standardised and tested. What he used to love about learning new things he was being graded on, his worth being directly contrasted with his classmates. He started to have panic attacks in the dark of the night before a test, stressed about how this was meant to be what he loved, and was finding that he wasn't good at it any more. His first bad mark became a symbol of how he was no longer good at what he loved, and it made him feel shameful; their was a sad pit at the bottom of his stomach that he couldn't seem to shift. This only seemed to get worse with time, as no matter how much effort and stress he seemed to heap upon his work, he couldn't seem to translate that into the perfection he sought, and the people around him expected of him. Eventually he just realised it was easy to stop caring. If he wasn't trying, he couldn't be upset by marks he got, only pleasantly surprised. Later he was able to explain away this behaviour with a multitude of reasons to the people who begged him to start trying again: tests are toxic, the institution of school is a waste of time, an effort to crush kids into the boxes society wanted them in, etc. etc.. But at the time, the truth was that he’d he stopped trying because he didn't have it in him to keep going. He needed to stop trying to stay afloat. Naturally his parents and his teachers despaired, and tried every tactic they could to get him back on track, but Damocles came to realise how futile it all was. So they we disappointed in him? They would have been disappointed anyway, when he wouldn't amount to the perfection that they had in mind for him. They were asking him to reach goals he couldn't achieve, whether he tried or not made no difference to that fact. So in a remarkably quick turn of events, Damocles went from being one of the most promising students in his year, to one of their problem children. He went to class most of the time, but rarely did any work when he got there, more often finding other irrelevant books to read, or finding some other sort of distraction. He never handed in any homework, and often found himself being docked points or in detention because of it. The Dorcas Meadowes Incident Late in his Seventh Year, as N.E.W.T.'s were rapidly approaching, Damocles' self-destructive partying got much worse. If his friends noticed they didn't do much, or anything really, to stop it. He had a reputation for being fun, the life of a party, a good and funny person to be around if you wanted cheering up, and he certainly put up a good facade at distracting his friends, and even himself from how he was truly feeling. Partying was a means to ignore the black hole of feelings that threatened to swallow him every time he started thinking about anything too serious. He didn't want to go back to how he'd felt in his third year ever again. One night of partying where he'd had far too much to drink, he and one of his close friends, Dorcas Meadowes, disappeared up to his dorm. Both too drunk to think about what they were doing, they hooked up - only stopped when Dorcas' boyfriend and Damocles' best friend, Kace, walked in on them. The effect was devastating. Kace was so angry at this betrayal that he broke things off with both his girlfriend and his best friend. Though with only a few months left in the castle, Kace avoided Damocles at all costs. Equally as ashamed, Dorcas did the same. Their close friendship group effectively broken, Damocles was left isolated, as their other friends took sides too - most, naturally, gravitated to Kace, who had been innocent and left heartbroken. Only Percy Contreras knew Damocles well enough to know it was a mistake, no matter how stupid it may have been, and remained steadfast in his friendship. Damocles, with no leg left to stand on and completely ashamed of his actions, retreated and accepted his exile as punishment. He ended up taking most of his N.E.W.T.'s while drunk, and graduated Hogwarts quietly and almost entirely alone. Post Hogwarts Years and the First Wizarding War (1977 - 1981) Upon leaving Hogwarts with fairly poor N.E.W.T.'s, no plans and basically no friends, Damocles was close to hitting his all-time low. He moved back in with his parents for a few months out of necessity, but found their disappointment in him, as well as the close-quarters with the rest of his high-achieving family, to be too stifling. He found a job by chance, browsing in Flourish & Blott's and impressing the manager with how well-read he was. Truthfully, he'd been flirting using his knowledge of some of the obscurest books they had on display, but by the end of their conversation she'd offered him a part-time position. Quickly enough, this became full-time and Damocles moved out of his family home as soon as he was able, so he could live in flat-share with some strangers in Muggle London. This was easier for his spiral of self-sabotage, to him to cut off contact with as many people who knew him as possible. Any money Damocles didn't spend on rent went towards his partying, and most days and nights of the way he was either drunk, high, or nursing some sort of hangover, in a very destructive and never ending circle. Having successfully burned his bridges with most of his family and friends, Damocles threw himself into the company of as many strangers as possible at night. During the daytime, when it was less acceptable to ruin himself with drink, his only friendly faces were Flourish & Blott's regulars and Percy Contreras, who was bartending at the Leaky Cauldron. Percy was one of the few close friends he'd managed to keep after Hogwarts and the Dorcas Incident; he was a secret child of Fenrir Greyback, and a werewolf, so wasn't as quick to turn away friends as most others were. Physical Appearance Damocles is of an average height and build, with grey (previously brown) curly hair and blue eyes. He has a couple of tattoos dotted around his body, over half of which he doesn't remember getting, and now in his middle-age regrets deeply. He later got a tattoo for his wife and each of his children, to make sure he had at least some that meant something to him, and these he's happy to keep with him forever. Personality and Traits Damocles is a naturally extroverted person; he both finds enjoyment in being around people, but often needs it to find his energy to keep going as well. He always finds that he's at his best when he's got at least one other person to bounce off of. Because of this, Damocles has always been a people-person, and finds great personal fulfilment from meeting new people and being around his friends. He has no fear of being the centre of attention in a group, especially if it's one he's bringing together, and does not mind if it's at his expense. He has a sharp tongue, witty and always ready to get involved in banter, and is the first one to engage in self-deprecating jokes. Sometimes his humour edges on the side of being too dark, and can be scathing, but this is usually a direct result of a low mood, and often directed at himself over anyone else. He has been an avid reader since he was a young boy, and this never wavered even through his most self-destructive years, picking up every book he could get his hands on, no matter how random the subject matter. As such, Damocles is extremely intelligent, and knowledgeable about an impressively wide range of subjects and interests, all of which he is able to remember and call upon if the situation requires it. For a long time he rarely put this knowledge to good use. Most often he used his impressive mind when flirting, but when over-excited (read: drunk), he could end up straying into the overwhelming. Damocles has a natural tendency towards hedonism. From an early age, he found he enjoyed to take the easy and fun option above anything else, and this only worsened in his teenage years and he got access to alcohol. All the way though until his late twenties, Damocles spent a lot of money, time, and energy on fun - it was always far too easy to persuade him to ditch his work, friends, and even his morality in pursuit of a good time. It took many years for him to admit to the fact he was an alcoholic, and took the combined effort of quitting his drinking and drug taking entirely, as well as confronting his mental health issues that drove him to it, to finally be able to effectively combat his problem. He's been teetotal since the late 1980s, and had a period of relapses in the 1990s. He has however been successfully sober since 1999, and tries as much as he can to channel this self-destructive tendency into more productive ventures; for example, cooking and his vegetable garden. Politically, Damocles is predisposed to apathy. He had the privilege of being able to ignore the rise of Voldemort before the First Wizarding War due to his pureblood status, but he probably wouldn't have fought on a side in the event even if he had been directly affected by it. During this time it didn't help that he was struggling mentally, and as his life was consumed with his own despair, his pessimism about himself also leaked into his outlook on life - and came to the conclusion that it was decidedly bleak. Though he was decidedly neutral in the blood supremacy debate, not really seeing the point in fighting a war you can't win ("life's unfair sometimes, why get your hopes up"), he also generally doesn't have a tolerance for 'arseholes' (his words), and bigots fell firmly under this category. Mostly he liked to ignore them, he didn't have it in him to care about what they got up to with their sad lives - but he equally he didn't really connect with the optimism that the first wave of resistance had in how they could wipe out blood supremacy entirely. Magical Abilities and Skills * Potions: Damocles has always had an aptitude for Potions, good with his instincts for ingredients and intuitive with the looks and feels of the things he's creating in his cauldron. It was probably one of the few skills of his that was actually able to flourish during lesson time at Hogwarts, as Professor Slughorn never bothered too much with the rules and was happy to let Damocles not follow instruction, as he still was able to come up with the result. Experimenting with and testing the limits of potioneering settled a happy medium between Damocles' fundamental respect for logic and past wisdom found by potioneers of the past, as well as his desire to push boundaries and try new creative things. His greatest potioneering achievement was the Wolfsbane Potion, which he perfected in the early 1980s, after many years dedicated to its making. Relationships Family Eleanor Belby Text His children Text His parents Text His siblings Text Friends Percy Contreras Category:Characters